Agent Ned reporting in: still deep under cover, stashing the Maketu good stuff around the countryside. Don’t think the locals are on to me yet. They’re too interested in eating something called a Pasty, which is clearly missing an ‘r’.

Took a detour to Somerset over the weekend to keep my cover going. Bath, to be precise, which is a perfectly charming town in the middle of nowhere on the basis that it has a hot spring. (Nothing to make Rotorua tremble, mind.)

The Romans liked a bit of a wash, so they called the place Bath. Built a bit of a shed over the pond, and the Pongos extended it a bit a few years later with a tea rooms where Jane Austen invited Georgette Heyer for a cuppa and scone. Or something like that.

Lovely spot, and it just so happened that Bath was playing Wasps on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately the place was swarming with braying blue-bloods so I couldn’t get a ticket. Instead I had to sit in a pub and swallow a dozen warm ales while saying in a very loud voice how fabulous the local players were, don’t change a thing, you’ll go the whole way lad.

On Sunday afternoon I found another pub and watched London Welsh play Leicester, mainly so I could see how Piri Weepu was getting on with his Welsh cousins. Unfortunately we have to use the word ‘play’ in a very loose way for London Welsh. They’re 0 and 13 for the season, and no hope for surviving. Poor old Piri looks grumpy as: he’s still got the wild man beard going, which is farily useful for a Pongo winter, and I sure hope he’s being paid in the folding stuff, but clearly he’d rather be pushing Wainuiomata around the park.

I can’t say that any of what I saw from any club would strike terror into Shag’s heart: all very much by the numbers, with nothing of any consequence happening in midfield.

What they really need to do is start a team called London Polynesians, and rope in all the cuzzies from the big teams. They need to be playing for love, not money.